by Ted Mooney
Watching Gabriella take up the letter again and return to the safe, Odile became aware of the absurdity of her position. It mortified her to be hiding like the maid in a French bedroom farce, yet to be discovered would be worse still. She stepped farther back into the closet and continued to watch.
Gabriella spun the combination lock several times, then, consulting the letter, turned the knob left, right, left, and pulled down on the latch. It didn’t budge. With a sigh, she spun the lock a few times to clear it and tried again. This time the safe swung open. Reaching inside, she withdrew a small, squarish package and a sealed business envelope. She closed the safe, went back to the bed, and slipped the package into her purse. Leaving the envelope on the bed, she gingerly returned the mirror to its place on the wall, stepped back to gauge whether it was straight, went forward to adjust it, and then, apparently satisfied, scooped the envelope up again.
At that moment the phone began to ring. Gabriella stared down at the bedside extension, letting it ring two, three, four times before she lifted the handset from its cradle.
“Hello?”
There followed a brief silence, then a sigh.
“No, Monsieur Colin isn’t home at the moment, I’m afraid. With whom am I speaking?” Gabriella’s eyes narrowed. “Sir, I’m only the housekeeper … Yes … That I can’t say, but if you’d like to leave a message I’ll be sure he … Hello? … Hello?” Frowning, she lowered the phone, hung up, and sat down on the edge of the bed, looking at nothing. Then, discovering the envelope in her hand, she opened it and scanned its contents.
Immediately she was on her feet again, headed straight for the closet. Odile ducked and burrowed in deeper behind the clothes. Flinging the door open, Gabriella reached in and, not a foot from Odile, grabbed a plastic shopping bag off the floor. Then the door swung shut again, and Odile, her knees buckling, sank into a crouch. Through the slats she watched Gabriella extract from the bag a black gift box tied with pink ribbon.
Until this moment Odile had assumed, without really thinking about it, that Gabriella had come here on Turner’s behalf, sent to perform some professional errand, however dubious, but now, as she watched her open the box, part the black tissue paper, and remove, with a small gasp of pleasure, a brassiere and matching panties of dark rose lace, finely cut and worked, she was forced to think again. Laying the lingerie out on the bed, Gabriella quickly undressed, peeled off the underwear she had on, and stuffed it into her turquoise bag. Naked, she possessed a beauty that the harsh set of her mouth otherwise obscured. She was young, her body fresh and unspoiled, and Odile had a momentary vision of her own physical decline, a vertiginous failing of the flesh she knew had already begun. Gabriella wriggled into the panties, put on the bra, and, reaching back to fasten it, gazed haughtily at herself in the mirror. She walked back and forth, her eyes on her reflection. Odile felt a flash of hatred that was followed immediately by shame at her own pettiness, and, a moment later, by detachment.
When Gabriella went into the bathroom and closed the door and the faucet began to run, Odile emerged without haste from her hiding place. A shaft of sunlight slanted across the turned-down bed and the toilet flushed. Odile slipped through the apartment, out into the hall, and down the stairs.
On the street she thought: Turner’s in serious trouble.
CHAPTER 12
THAT WEEK the unseasonably mild and sunny weather broke, and a steady rain settled over Paris. Water gushed from the gargoyle spouts of churches and cathedrals, streamed off mansard roofs and marble statuary, flowed down cobblestone streets and curbside gutters, across esplanades and plazas, down métro station steps and escalators, through every channel and crevice in this city without storm drains to spill at last into the swollen river that ran westward through its heart.
By Thursday afternoon the Seine had risen nearly three meters—up to the shoulders of the Zouave, the statue beneath the Pont de l’Alma by which Parisians reckon their floods—and Max, who had been watching the TV reports and brooding, decided it was time to shoot some video. He and Jacques loaded their gear into the rusted-out Citröen that Max kept for such purposes and drove with belated urgency to the quai de la Tournelle, where, it soon became apparent, a crisis was in progress.
The Nachtvlinder’s stern mooring had torn loose, and she now trailed treacherously out into the river’s near branch, restrained only by her bow line from being carried off by the seething cocoa-brown torrent, either to crash against her houseboat neighbors or to have her wheelhouse sheared off by the next bridge downstream. The water had risen over the quai and partway up the steps that led to the street. Gathered there were Groot, Rachel, and a handful of their fellow houseboaters, all talking at once, a gray wooden dinghy tossing skittishly in the river at their feet.
“A moment of truth,” Jacques said, as he and Max surveyed the scene from the sidewalk above. “Too bad we didn’t get here earlier.”
“What do you mean, earlier?” Max replied. “I’ve spent the whole day working out the timing on this. We’re here now.”
Jacques brightened. “Obviously. So how do we handle it?”
“Let’s just get down there. I’ll shoot, you take sound. And if Rachel and her boyfriend split up, you stick with her. Keep her talking. We might want to run her in voice-over.”
They got their equipment out of the car and hurried down to join their subjects, where the roar of the river made it necessary to shout in order to be heard. Groot was listening to a grizzled Frenchman in oilskins who kept pointing to the Nachtvlinder with an accusatory finger that then traced a short arc to the houseboats immediately downstream, which, though riding perilously high, remained secure at their moorings. Groot nodded, then, noticing Max filming, spoke directly into the camera.
“He says that to haul her in by the one line would be very dangerous. The current would drive her into the other boats. Since I am the incompetent one, he says, I should cut the Nachtvlinder loose and not endanger innocent people. But of course I cannot do that.” He shrugged and turned toward Rachel, who had grabbed his shoulder from behind and was speaking into his ear. Max motioned Jacques to bring the sound boom in as close as possible.
“We have to move soon,” she was saying, “or we’re going to start losing votes here.”
“Yes, Rachel. I’m thinking.”
“I know you are, I know. But what I want to say is, Boudu has gone to get his grappling hook. He’ll expect us to give it a try.”
Groot looked out over the river. “I can’t use the hook. The risk of damage is too great.”
“No, Groot, listen. Damage to the boat we can repair. It’s the damage to community relations that we should worry about. There’s no point in saving the boat if we can’t live here afterward.”
Declining to reply, he instead went to where a pair of oars had been propped against the stone retaining wall, took one in either hand, and walked down the steps to the dinghy. Max tracked him with the camera.
“Wait!” A squat man in his forties with a full mustache and beard hurried after him and, coming abreast, held up an entreating hand. “Don’t be foolish! You can do nothing with this boat in such a current. Believe me, you’d be lost before you begin.”
Groot placed the oars in the dinghy and turned to face him. “Suppose you’re right. What would you suggest I do?”
“You must wait for la fluviale,” the man said. “They alone have the equipment to save your boat. And eventually you’ll have to report to them anyway. This is the law.”
Shaking his head, Groot went to where Rachel stood shivering on the steps, her long hair drenched and her thick glasses rain spattered. Jacques, as instructed, hovered nearby with the sound boom.
“In the end,” Groot said, “it’s up to us alone. Only we can decide what to do. Agreed?”
Rachel swallowed. “Yes.”
“Good. I’m going to swim out there with a line that I’ll tie to the stern. You can organize the neighbors to haul her about on that line until she’s
again facing downstream. Then we’ll use both the bow and stern lines to bring her in. With two points of control, no damage is possible.”
Max zoomed in slowly. The shot composed itself: the finely wrought Dutchman and the tall American taking counsel together.
“But Groot, that current! Do you really think you can make it?”
“Yes, I do. Anyway, I’ll swim with the line tied around my waist.”
Rachel pursed her lips. “I don’t like it.”
“No? Well, liking it is optional. Doing it is what matters.”
Behind the camera, Max exulted. The shot continued to flow, accommodating all the little hesitations and human flutters that on the screen would translate into something larger, something that might, if all went well, make visible what performance more often than not obscured or, as he was coming to think, quite possibly replaced.
Groot called out to a boy carrying a coil of fluorescent orange rope over his shoulder. He laid the rope down, and Groot began to undress.
“What about the water?” said Rachel nervously. “You’ll be poisoned before you even get halfway.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t drink it, I promise.”
“Hepatitis, dysentery, conjunctivitis. Polio, if they still have that.”
“I’ll disinfect afterward.” Stripped now to his briefs, Groot secured one end of the rope to an iron ring set into the retaining wall, then went back down the steps, followed closely by Rachel.
Jacques waited for Max to finish the shot, then the two of them took up new positions down by the water’s edge.
“What if he drowns?” asked Jacques. “Wouldn’t we have a hard time shooting a film around that?”
“On the contrary. If he drowns, the film makes itself.” Max held a light meter up and took a reading. “That doesn’t necessarily mean we want him to drown, you understand. What we want is to film. About everything else we’re essentially neutral. Got it?”
Jacques grinned. “Sure.”
“And try to get Rachel to talk. I’ll be shooting him, but she’s our real subject, okay? Let’s do it.”
Groot was tying the line around his waist as he spoke to Rachel. “If I get into trouble, I’ll wave an arm. Don’t do anything unless you see that wave. And don’t panic. In situations like this, things often look worse than they are.”
“Yeah, right.”
Max let the camera linger over their embrace.
“Hurry back,” she said.
Groot waded down the steps into the churning water and, once he was waist deep, started swimming upstream at an oblique angle so the current would eventually drag him to the boat. He was, Max thought, an astonishingly strong swimmer.
“Your boyfriend is risking his life to save a boat,” Jacques said to Rachel. “Is that wise?”
She looked past the sound boom to where Groot labored through the onrushing waters, his broad back twisting from side to side as he swam. “You’re trying to provoke me, aren’t you? For your film.”
“No, I only mean that you must be worried for him, out there by himself, in such dangerous conditions.”
She removed her glasses, wiped them dry, and put them back on, scrutinizing Jacques carefully before turning again to the river. “Groot’s physically courageous,” she said. “I’ve always been attracted to guys like that, probably because my father was in the military—the United States Navy, as a matter of fact. So to answer your question, the Nachtvlinder is where Groot and I live, she’s our home, but she’s also a nautical vessel, and there’s a really ancient history of how you’re supposed to deal with one that’s in distress and under your command.” She paused. “Excuse me, but isn’t this going to seem, like, totally contrived?”
Jacques hastened to reassure her. “We’ll fix it in the editing. Just say whatever’s on your mind.”
Keeping Groot snugly framed in the viewfinder, Max struggled to stay calm, galled that he had no control whatsoever over the present action. Yet the scene itself was riveting, so rich with texture that there was almost too much of it.
“What’s on my mind right now,” said Rachel, “is his safety, obviously. But I know Groot, and I can tell you that all he’s thinking about is the boat. Everything we care about is tied up in her. You just get so connected, it’s not really something you can explain.” She hugged herself. “A boat’s like a living thing.”
For the first time Max became aware of the debris being borne along on the current. He panned upriver to take in tree branches, a tire, a plastic bucket, and a battered aluminum canoe, following it all as it flew past.
Groot was more than halfway to the boat, still swimming strongly. His neighbors stood huddled together on the steps.
In an effort to keep Rachel talking, Jacques mentioned their good fortune in not being on board when the Nachtvlinder lost her mooring.
She shook her head grimly. “Actually, this is all pretty much my fault,” she said. “We should’ve been on board, but I talked him into taking me skiing in Chamonix for a couple of days, which we definitely couldn’t afford, even without the flood. Now we come back to this.”
“Any idea what went wrong?” Jacques persisted. “None of your neighbors’ boats broke loose.”
“We had her rigged with a system of backup cables. I don’t know, maybe we should have—”
But at that moment a wooden orange crate, hurtling along on the wild waters, spun into the air and struck Groot in the back of the head. Max zoomed in as he went under, panning left with the current. Two, three seconds passed. When Groot resurfaced, fifteen meters downstream, he was bleeding from the scalp and nose.
“Oh my God!” Rachel grabbed hold of the orange rope that now ran some seventy meters from the ring bolt to Groot’s waist. “Help me!”
Stricken, Jacques looked back and forth from her to Max.
“Wait!” Max shouted, holding up a hand as he continued to film. “He’s okay!”
The neighbors all began shouting contradictory instructions.
“He said he’d wave,” Jacques reminded Rachel. “Didn’t he say that?”
The current had driven Groot even with the boat. He struggled to maintain his position, then turned to look at the people gathered on the bank. He seemed to shake his head.
“He’s hurt,” Rachel said, “and we can’t just leave him out there. Help me!”
Jacques again hesitated.
“Okay, I’ll do it myself.”
But before she could begin hauling him in, Groot turned back toward the boat and resumed swimming. A dozen strokes later, he grabbed hold of the ladder at the aft of the Nachtvlinder and, hand over hand, dragged himself on board as the onlookers applauded. Max filmed him on deck, arms upraised against the steel-gray sky. Then, as Groot untied the rope that encircled his waist, Max pulled his focus back steadily until the shot again included Rachel, standing to the left in the foreground with her back to the camera.
She turned around, bedraggled but quite beautiful, and, seeing Max, smiled demurely. “Did you get all that?” she asked.
Some time later, after the Nachtvlinder had been hauled safely back to her high-water berth and Groot had been disinfected with a bottle of whiskey and the neighbors had dispersed, Max and Jacques took their equipment back up to street level and stowed it in the Citröen. The rain had tapered off.
“You were right about the timing,” said Jacques. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t. I just waited as long as I could before going in. Mind-set is half the battle in a project like this, especially when you shoot in real time.”
“Well, one thing’s for certain, Max. We’ve really got a film now.”
He gazed irritably over the car roof at his assistant. “Which film is that?”
For an instant Jacques seemed at a loss. “But Max, this is exactly what you’ve been looking for: Rachel in adversity, a woman of the American type, innocent but hardy, all that.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “All that. But suddenly I have the feeling th
ere’s a piece of this I’m not seeing yet. Some overall tendency of events, I don’t know. Fear and pity, maybe.”
“Fear and pity? No, please. It worries me when you quote Aristotle.”
“Ah, you see,” said Max, “that’s my problem. I don’t know how to disengage.” Shaking his head, he opened the passenger-side door. “Really, it’ll be my undoing.”
He had Jacques drive him and the equipment to the studio, where he backed up the day’s work and filed it with the rest of the Rachel footage. Then he crossed the courtyard to the apartment and had a hot shower. Odile was with a client in the fifth arrondissement. Max expected her back for supper at nine.
Watching the TV coverage of the flood, a glass of whiskey in his hand, he was stirred anew by the force and drama of the river: its balletic surge, the sheer mass and velocity of its roiling waters, its absolute conformity to physical law. At times he had to remind himself that it was Paris he was seeing and not some improvident biblical city in the grip of a senile God.
Not everyone had fared as well as Groot and Rachel. The international news channel repeatedly ran footage of a classic Dutch tjalk ramming into the Pont Mirabeau, where it stuck fast, the remnants of its superstructure accordioned against the bridge’s steel under-struts. Moments later an errant telephone pole stove in the hull, and the boat sank with dismaying dispatch. Max watched the sequence several times, fascinated. A boat’s like a living thing, Rachel had said. He got up and poured himself another whiskey.
Odile arrived at half past nine, flushed and faintly aglow. Her client, an Algerian-born doctor’s daughter with an advanced fashion sense, had some weeks back commissioned a wedding dress, encouraging her to experiment, and they’d just been over the first set of drawings. The meeting had gone well.
